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A DANGER TO SOCIETY, OR A VICTIM?Wheelchair-bound grower arrested and allegedly beaten by cops.by Preston Peet

When is a 39-year-old wheelchair-bound man, who has suffered from spina bifida and other serious ailments all his life, a dangerous threat to society? Police and prosecutors in New Jersey say it?s when he?s growing marijuana.

Police moved in just before dawn on March 13, raiding and arresting John ?Waldo? Cliver and his girlfriend, Henri L. Pestcoe, in their Cherry Hill, New Jersey home, and confiscating 156 plants in various stages of growth from an apartment Cliver rented in Pennsauken. Cliver was charged with a variety of offenses related to cultivation, operating a drug business within 1,000 feet of a school, and intent to distribute. Pestcoe was charged with possession of more than 50 grams of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. Official estimates put the value of the plants at $624,000?or $4,000 each.

Cliver was awake at 4:30 AM when he heard the police at the door. ?I was the one that opened the door,? he tells HT. ?Right away, they bullied me into my room. I was pushing myself backwards until I got back into my room, where I started talking and they started talking. It was over what happened at this time that they stuck in a ?resisting arrest? charge. I tried to shut my computer off because I was online speaking with someone else. The police started playing around with my computer, clicking around on it, literally playing with it. I went to shut it off and that?s when about four of them pulled me off my wheel chair and put me on the ground.?

Police officers pulled a guy off his wheelchair and pushed him to the ground? ?Well, they didn?t actually pull me, they hit me in the back of the head, knocked me right to the ground, and about four of them stomped on my head and my back. Knocked me right out of the chair. They were literally with their knees in my temple and knees in my back. It was ridiculous. I was screaming, my girlfriend was screaming, and my back is very screwed up as a result. They really did hurt me. They humiliated me. Because it is difficult for me to get up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom, I keep a urinal by the bed. They were walking around here with the urinal saying things like ?this is disgusting.? My girlfriend kept telling them that I have spina bifida. They were just all-around rotten people.?

Approximately 1 out of 1,000 newborns in the US suffer from spina bifida, which is caused by the spine improperly developing and failing to completely close during the first months of pregnancy, according to the Spina Bifida Association of America (http://www.sbaa.org/html/sbaa_facts.html). ?Because of the paralysis resulting from the damage to the spinal cord, people born with spina bifida may need surgeries and other extensive medical care. The condition can also cause bowel and bladder complications,? dryly notes their Website. Its best-known sufferer was probably country-music legend Hank Williams, who exhibited many of these symptoms before he died of a drug overdose at the age of 29.

?I was here with them for about an hour,? Cliver says. ?Handcuffed, because they had knocked me to the ground almost as soon as they came in. They then put the chair back up and lifted me back up into my chair. Then a lieutenant woman from the Cherry Hill police came in and informed the police already there that she wanted them to transport me in an ambulance because of my condition. My girlfriend turned around and told her that she appreciated what she was doing, and then went on to tell her what they?d already done to me and how they?d been treating me. The lieutenant was giving out some evil eye to the other officers. They beat up on me pretty good.?

Cliver was transported in an ambulance to John F. Kennedy Hospital in Cherry Hill, where he was examined for two or three hours. He was then taken to Camden County jail until his girlfriend and friends could raise a $90,000 bond for his release on March 15. Two days later, he was back in a hospital for long-planned surgery on a lingering and painful bone infection in his foot.

?I am now still giving myself intravenous antibiotics. I?m totally homebound. It?s going to be 12 to 14 weeks before they know if the antibiotics I?m giving myself are working,? Cliver explains. ?When you have clubbed feet like I have, you get breakdown of calluses, which form canals to the bone. It forms bone infections which never go away. I mean, on top of the spina bifida, I?ve got kidney and bladder stones. I have to catheterize myself to be able to go to the bathroom sometimes. My medical problems are pretty in depth.?

Police and prosecutors claimed they found over an ounce of marijuana in the house, and plants up to five feet tall in the Pennsauken apartment, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer (http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/5398663.htm). Cliver disputes both claims. ?They found 75 two-inch tall plants that didn?t even have any roots on them yet. I had one five-foot tall mother. I also had 75 one-foot tall plants with no buds on them,? he tells HT. As for the house, ?There was no marijuana here, maybe less than a couple joints. I was out. I had none. There was no pot.?

A lawyer told Cliver that there is a possibility of getting the charges substantially reduced, but he would need $40,000 to cover the legal costs. Still waiting for a court date, Cliver is very ill, homebound and stuck in a wheel chair. With his girlfriend?s home already covering the cost of is bond, it is not going to be easy raising this kind of money.

?This has really blown me away, the way the police treated me, knocking me around and saying all sorts of things trying to humiliate me,? says Cliver. ?One cop was saying how he wanted to take out my girlfriend while I was in jail. They went on and on.?

--------------------"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." - Thomas Jefferson

It still baffles me that some people want to give these assholes full use of weapons while disarming all the citizens. How much more bold would they be then?

--------------------To call humans 'rational beings' does injustice to the term, 'rational.' Humans are capable of rational thought, but it is not their essence. Humans are animals, beasts with complex brains. Humans, more often than not, utilize their cerebrum to rationalize what their primal instincts, their preconceived notions, and their emotional desires have presented as goals - humans are rationalizing beings.

--------------------To call humans 'rational beings' does injustice to the term, 'rational.' Humans are capable of rational thought, but it is not their essence. Humans are animals, beasts with complex brains. Humans, more often than not, utilize their cerebrum to rationalize what their primal instincts, their preconceived notions, and their emotional desires have presented as goals - humans are rationalizing beings.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting the biggest scumbag I have ever met. I was hanging out with my friend and his cousin came over. His cousin talked the entire time about how he likes to start fights, get hookers and steal anything that isn't chained down. After he had been talking about some of the beatings he had given to people who were much weaker than himself I tried to change the subject (and avoid a fight) and I asked him what he did. He responded by telling me he was a cop (I was underage and drinking with him at the time). He then told me about how he had learned during his training how to inflict large amounts of pain without leaving any marks. Then he laughed about how he had beaten the shit out of a 17 year old kid in jail who had been caught driving without insurance. Then he told me that the kid had killed himself during the night and he fucking laughed about it. He was the biggest asshole I have ever met and he is supposed to uphold the law. What a joke.

--------------------"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." - Thomas Jefferson

The way I see it is this, there are two types of people who are attracted to police work.1) People who like to control others and beat them.2) People who sincerely want to help those who are victims or weaker than themselves.The latter type burn out very quickly from seeing all the injustices and shit that people do to each other, and their feelings of impotence at not being able to make a difference.

--------------------To call humans 'rational beings' does injustice to the term, 'rational.' Humans are capable of rational thought, but it is not their essence. Humans are animals, beasts with complex brains. Humans, more often than not, utilize their cerebrum to rationalize what their primal instincts, their preconceived notions, and their emotional desires have presented as goals - humans are rationalizing beings.

I think there are also a few people for whom police work is a family business i.e. they become a police officer because their father was a police officer. Also, there are the adrenaline-junkies who join the SWAT team.

I have cops in my family, I've hung out with them and their friends (a long time ago) and listened to their stories. Pretty scary. Now I have little to no use for any of them...

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others--as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders--serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as the rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few--as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men--serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. A wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be "clay," and "stop a hole to keep the wind away," but leave that office to his dust at least... - Henry David Thoreau from "On The Duty of Civil Disobedience."

--------------------To call humans 'rational beings' does injustice to the term, 'rational.' Humans are capable of rational thought, but it is not their essence. Humans are animals, beasts with complex brains. Humans, more often than not, utilize their cerebrum to rationalize what their primal instincts, their preconceived notions, and their emotional desires have presented as goals - humans are rationalizing beings.